Gay Playwrights

Published: November 25, 2007

To the Editor:

In Thomas Mallon's review of ''Gay Artists in Modern American Culture,'' by Michael S. Sherry (Nov. 11), a book I have not yet read, Mallon says that Sherry refers to criticism written in The New York Times by Howard Taubman and myself in the 1950s and '60s, articles that invited gay playwrights to end their ''dissembling'' through heterosexual characters and put their own ''sick lives'' on the stage. Mallon writes: ''Such advice was offered, Sherry says, not as a way for playwrights to liberate their creativity but as a means of shielding straight audiences against what was seen as 'insidious influence.''' About Mr. Taubman's criticism I cannot speak, but please permit me to point out two matters regarding my own articles. (There were two such articles, on Jan. 23 and Feb. 6, 1966, both available in my collection ''Persons of the Drama.'')

First, the phrase ''insidious influence'' or any comparable phrase does not appear in my articles. Second, my intent was precisely the reverse of the one given above. I attacked a society that prevented gay playwrights from treating their lives frankly and then complained about disguises in gay writers' plays. ''A serious public, seriously interested in the theater, must sooner or later consider that when it complains of homosexual influences and distortions, it is complaining, at one remove, about its own attitudes. I note further that one of the few contemporary dramatists whose works are candidates for greatness, Jean Genet, is a homosexual who has never had to disguise his nature.'' Do these comments -- there is much more in this vein -- smack of ''shielding straight audiences'' against ''insidious influence''?

Restrictions on gay playwrights melted away in the next five years or so, and I hope that my articles helped a little in this liberation.